'The Border' a sophisticated but sometimes unrealistic look at real issues

My story about CBC's drama series The Border is now out on the Canadian Press wire.  This was a story that I had first pitched back in the spring, when the series was ending its first season, but the timing wasn't right for various reasons.  When the start of the second season approached, I pitched it again and this time it was picked up.  And then the real work started.

I had originally wanted to have my panel of experts consist of Janine Kreiber, one of our foremost experts on counter-terrorism in this country, Janice Gross Stein from the Munk Centre for International Studies, and Peter Harder, former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and frequent guest on Politics with Don Newman.  However, timing here was not good--Janine Kreiber is currently on a campaign plane (as she also happens to be Stéphane Dion's wife), Janice Gross Stein was out of town, and I couldn't get in touch with Peter Harder after a week of trying.

The two experts I did get in touch with, however, were superlative, and each offered a differing point of view on the show, and it was also great to talk with the showrunner, Janet MacLean, because I'm always fascinated by the people behind shows that I like to watch.  Also very cool about this piece, was that I got to watch episodes 201 and 203 before the rest of the country--and they were pretty good.

Despite some fraught moments getting all of my expert interviews done in time, it was a very fun piece to write.  In total, I have over an hour's worth of interviews that had so much good stuff in them that it was hard to pick out what I had to compress into an eight hundred word piece.  I'll pick out some more highlights for you in the next couple of days.

(Interestingly enough, the version on the Yahoo reader has my byline on it but the one on the Google reader doesn't.  Unfortunately, the Yahoo one expires in just a few weeks.  Such is the peril of writing for a wire service, I guess).